1. U.S. Pat. No. 5,315,700 entitled, xe2x80x9cMethod and Apparatus for Rapidly Processing Data Sequencesxe2x80x9d, by Johnston et. al., May 24, 1994
2. U.S. Pat. No. 6,130,967 entitled, xe2x80x9cMethod and Apparatus for a Reduced Instruction Set Architecture for Multidimensional image processingxe2x80x9d, by Shih-Jong J. Lee, et. al., Oct. 10, 2000
3. Pending application Ser No. 08/888,116 entitled, xe2x80x9cMethod and Apparatus for Semiconductor Wafer and LCD Inspection Using Multidimensional Image Decomposition and Synthesisxe2x80x9d, by Shih-Jong J. Lee, et. al., filed Jul. 3, 1997
4. U.S. Pat. No. 6,122,397 entitled, xe2x80x9cMethod and Apparatus for Maskless Semiconductor and Liquid Crystal Display Inspectionxe2x80x9d, by Shih-Jong J. Lee, et. al., Sep. 19, 2000
5. U.S. Pat. No. 6,148,099 entitled, xe2x80x9cMethod and Apparatus for Incremental Concurrent Learning in Automatic Semiconductor Wafer and Liquid Crystal Display Defect Classificationxe2x80x9d, by Shih-Jong J. Lee et. al., filed Jul. 3, 1997
1. Co-Pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/693,723 entitled, xe2x80x9cImage Processing System with Enhanced Processing and Memory Managementxe2x80x9d, Shih-Jong J. Lee et. al.
2. Co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/693,378 entitled; xe2x80x9cImage Processing Apparatus Using a Cascade of Poly-Point Operations, Shih-Jong J. Lee
1. Backgroundxe2x80x94Field of the Invention
This invention relates to image processing, specifically to an improved filtering approach.
2. Background of the Inventionxe2x80x94Prior Art
Conventional image processing algorithms can be implemented in general purpose computers. However, the processing speed is not satisfactory for most time-critical computer vision applications. In today""s art, specialized image processing hardware is used. In contrast to the general trend of general purpose hardware which is widely applied to general tasks and is therefore inexpensive, the specialized hardware used in image processing is costly to create and difficult to maintain and to update. The result is that the specialized hardware approach results in obsolete technology being used in current products. The modularized conventional image processing approach requires the use of several costly special hardware modules (video acquisition, processing, display, storage) and specialized development tools. Because of the cost and development effort required for each image processing application, the technology has been limited to high-end applications and products that can absorb the excessive cost. It is not practical for a large number of lower end application opportunities such as digital cameras, video capable web phones and vision capable information appliances.
Another difficulty is that even with specialized hardware and a large development time, large kernel or three-dimensional image processing operations are still prohibitively expensive or time consuming.
3. Objects and Advantages
It is an object of this invention to enable a new paradigm of high performance image processing systems using low-cost general purpose computing platform programmable in a high level language to accomplish high performance real time image processing. It is a further object of the invention to enable real-time image processing in resource constrained mobile computing or information/e appliance platforms. A further object of the invention is to enable real-time, high performance image processing capability for industrial, scientific and medical applications using low cost desktop computing facilities or embedded CPU. A further object of the invention is to allow the increase of image processing capability without significant work when speed/capacity of CPU and memory increases or multiple CPUs, memory channels become available for use. A further object is to increase the cross platform portability of the image processing software. Another object of the invention is to decrease sensitivity to kernel size in image processing operations and thereby facilitate efficient large kernel or multi-dimensional image processing at lower cost or higher throughput. Further objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent from a consideration of the drawings and ensuing description.